Gov hits back, but clearing house still costs too much

The Federal Government’s Medicare-based clearing house for small businesses has sparked a war of words with the Opposition, which claims it is costing $177 for every transaction.

In a statement justifying the Coalition’s plan to establish an alternative clearing house, the Opposition claimed that at a cost of $16 million per year for 90,000 transactions, this equated to $177 per transaction.

But the Government hit back yesterday, stating the Opposition got its figures wrong and that the clearing house cost $16 million over three years, not $16 million per year.

This would still equate to almost $60 per transaction.

Both the Small Business Minister, Senator Nick Sherry, and Minister for Superannuation, Bill Shorten, teamed up for the joint release stating the Coalition had its figures wrong and that the clearing house had received a high level of satisfaction.

“Yet, the Coalition wants to spend up to $368 million of taxpayers’ money to set up a duplicate scheme,” Shorten said.

“The coalition is incapable of coming up with effective policies, all they come up with is sloppy maths and mindless negativity,” he added.